Oh wow, yeah. I've always had longish nails naturally and in high school I loved doing different things with polish, now I don't even like maintaining polish. Maybe all the typing I do nowadays makes it chip faster? I don't know, anyways, one time a few years ago a friend found out I'd never had acrylic nails done and she said something along the lines of "OMG you totally have to do it! I'm going tomorrow let's go together!". (This was before she had a kid, now I never see her with fake nails, but she's still the one to suggest shopping as an activity...) So I went with her and had total sticker shock when they were finished and were like "okay $32", luckily I had enough cash on me but wow, I was pretty much done with fake nails immediately. I never went back for maintenance, I actually found a kit at walmart that you could do your own so I bought that for way cheaper than the maintenance and used that instead, and got another use out of it as another set of nails.
Since then I have done the walmart gel nail kits (way easier than the acrylic kits, as the gel is self-smoothing) for occasions like when I was in a wedding (actually the girl mentioned above's wedding!). You can get 2 uses out of the different-sized nails for like $8 (plus maintenance). Still a splurge but nowhere near as much as going to get them done! They aren't quite as strong but then again, they're easier to get off too, and probably nicer on your natural nails. Typing is weird with them but I've gotten used to them in a day or two, I think that is worse on my flat laptop keyboard than on the real keyboard at work anyways.